Later poetry in the Hebrew Bible has been unfavorably compared to the classical poetry of Proverbs. In a study based on his 1999 dissertation, Reymond (St. John's U. and Long Island U.) reassesses Ben Sirach's nine poems. After a brief review of past scholarship, he argues from a philological analysis of each poem that, rather than being poor imitations of earlier forms, they employ an innovative parallel structure to express ideas on such themes as wickedness vs. the just. The appendix lists semantic/repetitive parallels between his poems and biblical texts. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
